The hysteria over Kern is enough to keep me away from most of the state and local threads. We could be talking about the price of an X-Box in 2005 and someone would start up on Kern and how horrible, bigoted, blah, blah, blah Oklahoma is. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to voice their opinions but the ones who hate Kern just can't get off it long enough to have a rational discussion about anything she can be dragged into. There is absolutely no point in even trying to say anything because it just disolves into an hysterical hatefest. How many times can people say she is a horrible person who should burn in hell before they get it out of their system and let someone else talk? We haven't reached that point, yet.

Sort of like how people keep using the President's middle name to try to stir similar anger and feelings huh?

There are nonconstructive, junk, BS filled posts from people on both ends of the political spectrum on this site. I can understand the frustration that develops on both sides because you have the liberals harping on Kern all the time and the conservatives call foul. Then you have radical conservatives spout Hussein this and that, and the liberals go crazy. The issue you point out PQ is on both sides, unfortunately people continue to take any responsibility for trying to diffuse it.

Like others have posted on this thread, the most successful online communities get to the point to where they police themselves. Unfortunately we see people who complain about behavior or one side, and then contribute to it from the other side. It is a never ending process and why frustration gets so high and where some of the anger begins to develop. If people would shut up and let others contribute, then we would be in a better place. However, everyone is more worried about destroying the opposing party (in anything) to prove they are better or superior. No one is ever willing to yield the floor and try to diffuse the situation. It is always, push push...defend defend...blame blame...push push...scream yell cry...rinse and repeat.

Going back a couple posts, I like that idea of a Blue and Red area and prohibiting people from posting in either to keep trolling down. However, what I don't like is that it effectively segregates two sides, isolates those of us in the middle, and goes against the purpose of building an online community. It would almost be better to just do away with politics on the site, except for local civic issues, and move on. Plus it probably won't be an easy system for Pete to implement, and we all know how much he enjoys installing Mods. :-)

I hate to see Politics deleted from this board. I have to admit that some people really get carried away and instead of talking issues they deal with personal attacks. I don't think that is acceptable regardless what side you support. Since we don't have much local talk on the radio, I would hate to not be able to discuss local and state issues, especially during election time.

Venture, yeah, kinda like using the President's middle name to stir things up.

Venture and Penny, you both know that the years I was using his middle name was not to attend stir anything up. Hope you both still love me.

I gotta ask then, ol' buddy, why were you doing it? Search your heart.

I gotta ask then, ol' buddy, why were you doing it? Search your heart.

I felt violated and betrayed. I can't think of anything else now. I'm drugged up. :-/

Oh Thunder.

Personally, I think we all need to step our game up.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKXwj7ZrHIc&feature=related

So what is your thought on the question that is being discussed in this thread?

I think people are too defensive on this board. They get their little feelings hurt if you express anything less than totally positive or even suggest how things could be better, or -gasp- just speak honestly about things. Some people want us all to be little vapid cheerleaders incapable of thinking for ourselves. I think the ability to speak honestly is paramount, and that involves criticizing sometimes. And I think above all, some people can not an honest discussion.

I also think in the politics forum some people are too tied up in their ideology to understand things in real terms. We do nothing but talk past each other on this forum. I stay out of the politics board and whenever I criticize a city policy, I always expect at least 3 angry responses and 3 agreeing responses.

I know this sounds elitist and condescending, but I really do think some people just don't have very high intelligence and aren't capable of handling an honest, sharp, critical discussion. They get overly defensive and then start making personal attacks. The personal attacks on this forum actually bother me a lot, usually I ignore them, but sometimes I get annoyed and forget that it's just the internet and respond in-kind. The fact that many people know me in real life means I should be above getting tied up in online fights, but sometimes it is too tempting to read a post full of idiotic arguments laced with personal attacks and not respond.

If people acted this defensive and attacking in real life, I wouldn't even know how to react. I am used to having reasonable debates with people, but there are some people you just CAN NOT debate with, and I think a lot of those people are HERE on this board unfortunately.

Oh and a few extremely prolific posters on here are hyper-bitter. That makes things difficult.

Even if it were the case that person x and y had wildly different intelligence levels or simply very different world views, they should still be able to interact and learn from one another without wanting to say mean things or hunt the other guy down in real life for a Bricktown back-alley beat-down. :-) I actually have to wonder if the problem isn't so called "emotional quotient/intelligence." I honestly don't think the people who hold their emotions on their sleeve realize that is what they do. I honestly don't think that the people who replied early-on in this thread offering advise to others while loading up their post with words and phrases designed to incite hostility know what they are doing.

I think as a society EQ is what we are losing and is what is taking a big toll on our civilization, and I think that comes out clearly in written form. I often think that the 'art of polite conversation' has been lost and that we would be so much better off if that weren't the case. The ability for one to get their point across without sounding acrimonious, and the skill of listening to nuanced language and reading between the lines for its meaning, is not what it once was. Or maybe we haven't lost it, maybe it is still there but is being dwarfed by the ever-growing legions of people who now have something to say.

Sadly, none of that will be solved here. Perhaps the best advise is for everyone to always try to put yourself in the other person's shoes and start out by giving them the benefit of the doubt. So often it seems like person x says something and person y comes right in and "corrects" them incessantly. That's just wrong on many levels. I think if you treat a subject like you are a teacher and try to explain your point of view to others, and if the other person listens to that point of view, takes it in and analyzes it, asks questions or offers up an explanation of their different point of view, we would all be a lot better off. Especially with topics like politics there is rarely a definitely "correct" answer.

The first thing I do when visiting OKCTalk is click "what's new".

Not seeing political posts populate that list has been the single best improvement made to this site, bar none.

I like it like that too, and I hope it would stay that way if we make any other changes or limitations. I never look at Politics until I am in the mood for it.

I like it like that too, and I hope it would stay that way if we make any other changes or limitations. I never look at Politics until I am in the mood for it.

I also like that politics is an area that requires you to make a special effort to see what is going on there.

Well.... I'm not sure what exactly it has been doing since Pete took Politics out of New Posts list. I just checked clicking New Posts and each thread/topic does show what section of the forum it is in. They can either click to read/view or not. The only side effect to this change is that it forces us to manually go into Politics to see what is going on. Not criticizing my brother, Pete, just my comment on that. :-)

The only side effect to this change is that it forces us to manually go into Politics to see what is going on. Not criticizing my brother, Pete, just my comment on that. :-)
I think that is the point, you have to make a conscience decision to venture into there.

It's hard for some to communicate well in a pure text world. A lot of good people come across as total a-holes merely because they lack online skills. I say that because I've met in person many people I only knew beforehand as an online jerk but in person they were pretty good people. I always try to keep that in mind when reading stuff online.

Thanks!!! I didn't even realize you could do that.

Thanks!!! I didn't even realize you could do that.

So now you can feel free to block the urban development boards :-)

Thanks!!! I didn't even realize you could do that.I didn't either. I've spent a few minutes doing this to a couple of other forums I frequent and it makes searching new posts much nicer. Thanks very much!

I hate to keep this thread going in a whole new direction so I'm starting a new "Search Filtering" thread. Please see it.

This thread reminds me of Rainn Wilson from the office and his blog today. If you have not checked it out there is some pretty good
stuff there

http://www.soulpancake.com/post/1526/takepart-tuesday-when-was-the-last-time-you-overreacted.html

Pete - this site is awesome! One of my faves.


Chris
www.radiookc.com

Even starting this thread made me feel a little negative but it has recently occurred to me there are lots of nice things that not only get said here, but there have been some very nice actions, too.

I'm going to start a thread on the good things that have come from this board... And I don't just mean learning about new developments.